Real Estate

A house on its own lot or an apartment in a condominium:

is the first split, and it decides more of your monthly cost than the price does. A house on its own lot comes with its own roof, tank, gate and garden to maintain. An apartment or a house inside a gated condominium shares a guard house, gardens and often a pool, and pays for them through a monthly maintenance fee. Lots and farms are a third kind of purchase, because you are paying for what can be built rather than what already stands. To buy, start in property for sale; to move in on a monthly contract, property for rent. Weekly and nightly stays at the beach or in the mountains have their own listings under short-term and vacation rentals.

Sale prices in dollars and the maintenance fee on top:

are the two things that make a property cost more than its listing says. Sales are quoted in dollars almost everywhere in the country, and plenty of rents are too, so a tenant earning colones sees the real cost of a dollar rent move with the exchange rate every month. As a reference, a two-bedroom apartment in a condominium in Heredia rents for roughly ₡450,000 to ₡650,000 a month, and a similar flat for sale is usually asking $150,000 to $200,000. Ask whether the fee is included in the rent and what it pays for, because a tower with a pool, gym and 24-hour guard costs more to live in than six flats behind a gate. Most landlords ask for one month’s rent as a deposit.

A building lot without a water availability letter:

is a very different purchase from one that has it. Before paying anything for land, ask for the plano catastrado, which shows the surveyed boundary, and for that letter, issued by the AyA or by the local ASADA, the community water board that supplies many rural districts. Check, too, whether you are buying a segregated lot with its own registration number or an undivided share of a larger property, with no boundary of its own. Near the beach, the listing should say whether the land is titled or held in concession, because the two are not the same thing to own.

Where a resale house shows its age:

look up first. Brown rings on a ceiling trace a gutter or flashing that has let water in; diagonal cracks running out from the corners of doors and windows deserve an engineer’s look before you sign. Run the highest tap and the shower together to judge the pressure, and ask whether the house has its own tank and pump for the days the mains supply drops. Before any deposit changes hands, look the property’s registration number up in the Registro Nacional to see who owns the property and whether a mortgage or lien is registered against it. Renting, walk through with the owner on the day you move in, photograph every mark and keep the pictures with the contract.

Before a buyer drives out to see your property:

give the province, canton and district, and keep the exact address for people who have booked a viewing. State the land area and the built area separately, the currency of the price and, for a rental, the deposit, whether pets are welcome, whether it comes furnished and which of water, electricity, internet and the maintenance fee are included. Photograph every room in daylight, the kitchen and bathrooms cleared, the street outside so people can see whether it is asphalt or gravel, and the tank. The same three questions arrive before anyone makes the trip: does the water run all day, does the street flood in a downpour, and how much is the maintenance fee. Selling a lot, walk the boundary first and clear the grass around the boundary markers, because a serious buyer coming from out of town will look for the concrete marker at each corner before talking price.